Mark Schmitt on the changing demographics of the Democratic Party:
Several years ago, I spoke on a panel where an audience member posed the rhetorical question, “Can any of you envision a robust progressive movement that doesn’t have organized labor at the center of it?”
The appropriate answer — the one that wouldn’t cause the labor-heavy audience to throw rotten tomatoes at us — was, “No.” And that was also the right answer. None of us could envision a vibrant liberal movement without labor because we’d never seen such a thing. From the New Deal to the civil-rights movement, organized labor has borne much of the weight of a broader progressive vision.
